The use of stents to maintain the patency of bodily lumens is well known. Stents are typically delivered via a catheter in an unexpanded configuration to a desired bodily location. Once at the desired bodily location, the stent is expanded and implanted in the bodily lumen. The stent may self-expand or may be mechanically expanded. Where a self-expanding stent is used, the stent is typically retained on the catheter via a retention device such as a sheath. The stent may be deployed by retracting the sheath from over the stent. Where a mechanically expandable stent is used, a radially outward force is typically applied to the stent to expand it. The force may be applied via an expandable member such as a balloon or via any other mechanical device.
Stents are used in an array of bodily vessels including the coronary arteries, the peripheral arteries, arteries of the neck, cerebral arteries, veins, biliary ducts, urethras, ureters, fallopian tubes, bronchial tubes, the trachea, the esophagus and the prostate.
Currently available stents include tubular stents such as the NIR™ stent as well as coil stents. Tubular stents are typically formed from tubes or from sheets of material from which material has been removed to form openings.
Coil stents typically are formed of a wire or strand which has been wound into a coil shape. Coil stents can exhibit a high degree of flexibility, including bendability and longitudinal flexibility which facilitates delivery of the stent through tortuous bodily vessels. Accurate sizing of coil stents, however, can be quite challenging.
There remains a need for coil stents which are flexible and which can be easily and accurately sized to the vessels in which they are implanted.
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Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.